It's about getting ‘the nuts and bolts right’ said Garry Monk after misfiring Middlesbrough coughed and spluttered through a frustrating draw with well oiled Preston.

The boss needs to check that there weren’t a few crucial cogs left on the engine room floor after his pre-match tune-up because his reassembled side backfired and stalled.

There was a worrying metallic rattling noise under the bonnet as Boro clunked and ground their way through the game. They lacked ooomph and power going forward and looked sluggish and struggled going up through the gears.

The positive impressive flashes up front from the first few home games when revved up Boro threatened to hit top gear were missing.

It wasn’t a car-crash by any means but the gaffer will need to get the spanners out and get his hands dirty and get the teams up on ramps over the international break.

Boro played with a completely new midfield unit - and it showed.

Monk had gone three games in a row with an unchanged side and looked promising. That continuity helped bed new faces in, helped form fledgling relationships within and between departments and helped foster some continuity, not just of personnel but of shape and system and style.

So the radically rejigged side was a surprise. And a risk. To drop Patrick Bamford was an eyebrow-raiser.

The intelligent movement and deft touch of the former Chelsea man as he skipped between pockets of space had helped knit together the fluid attacking operation in the previous two home league wins.

He had helped harness the power and pace of Britt Assombalonga and the physical presence of Rudy Gestede so to take him out of the offensive equation seemed odd.

Assombalonga looked off the pace and out of sync with Gestede, who won most of the aerial battles but rarely had anyone near him.

The expensively assembled frontline rarely looked a threat and a well organised Preston coped easily.

And Preston made Boro look like Ordinary Boys in midfield too.

Lewis Baker, full of slick swagger against Scunthorpe, had been expected to come in and orchestrate the engine room, to add the elusive dash of creativity to bring the best out of the strikeforce but he was ineffective in a wider role.

There may well have been a case for dropping Adam Forshaw, who had looked ragged in recent games.

A year ago he was being hailed as Boro’s best midfielder but this term has been slowly edging into the unwanted role as terrace boo-boy elect and was the popular choice to give way.

But the change didn’t work. The balance of the midfield felt all wrong. Baker wasn’t able to pick out any movement going forward and Jonny Howson, supposed to be a box-to-box battler who would buzz around in support of the No 10, was sucked deeper and deeper and was left huffing-and-puffing as Preston pushed forward and looked the most likely to made a breakthrough.

It was odd too to start with Fabio in a left midfield role in the rumour inducing absence of Adama Traore.

Fabio celebrates his goal against Scunthorpe

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The Brazilian actually did quite well. He was busy going forward in an unusual role, got crosses in and he covered back and battled away with a bit of spirit - but it seemed strange to use him there with Stewart Downing sat on the bench.

And having not played the role before this term there was little instinctive understanding of his how the midfield ticked and things just didn’t gel.

That left sterile Boro with very few creative options. There were long balls forward to Gestede and occasional overlaps down the right from dynamic Cyrus Christie.

In fact, for much of the first half the right-back looked Boro’s best bet for making a breakthrough as he powered forward and weaved past one or two defenders before looking up and seeing no-one to aim at and ending up over-running it or being crowded out.

It wasn’t until Stewart Downing came on that Boro looked like they had any shape or balance and by then it was a case of desperately flailing to impose themselves.

The system didn’t work. It will have underlined that Boro are still short in the crucial creative department. They have invested in an enviable armoury of hitmen but as yet are not getting the best out of them.

Credit to Preston. They were well drilled, hard-working and highly motivated and will have left the Riverside thinking they deserved more than a point. And but for Darren Randolph they would have done.

Preston’s record speaks for itself.

They have played a string of pre-season promotion contenders - Derby, Reading, Sheffield Wednesday, Leeds and now Boro - and have yet to concede from open play.

They don’t score many but they are very hard to break down - they are an archetypal Championship side of the kind that Boro must find a way to beat if they are to achieve their objective of promotion.

So the complete failure to even scratch them will have been disappointing for the powers that be - but it also be an acute reminder than Boro are not the finished product.

They are still a few component parts short of a revved up team that can motor up the league.

Luckily Boro have the market muscle to bring in the men they need before the deadline.

And luckily they now have a two week international break to allow the boss to retro-fit the parts and fine-tune and engineer the team ready to roar.